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Most Reliable 3Tb HDD for storage.

Which 2/3 TB HDD...?

  • WD Green

  • Hitachi 5K300

  • Seagate Green/LP

Results are only viewable after voting.
R

rana_kirti

Member
Hi fellas,

Just became a proud owner of a Crucial 128Gb M4. The difference it made to my system is night and day.

Everyone Please buy an SSD for OS/Apps/Games.!! :thumbsup:

So now i need to buy a 3tb HDD for storage. I simply want the most reliable HDD out there. I just can't deal with RMA. I'm willing to compromise on power consumption and noise but it has to be 100% reliable. So guys, which 3tb HDD would be most reliable option ?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...78&IsNodeId=1&bop=And&Order=PRICE&PageSize=20

Thanks,

Rana.
 
No hard disk is 100% reliable. I have a 3 year old Seagate 7200.11 500GB that failed twice (bad sectors), a 3 year old WD Blue 640GB that hasn't failed, and a 7 year old WD 160GB that has had no problems at all. If you're willing to compromise @ 2tb the WD Caviar Black would probably be the most reliable built out there since it offers 5 year warranty, but really if you want reliability you are best served with a RAID 1 (redundancy) setup, or back up your data regularly. Someone once told me, if it doesn't exist in 3 places it doesn't exist at all, and that should be your mindset/philosophy if you have valuable data.
 
I feel like a broken recorded, as this question has been asked several times recently.
But I had two of the Seagate Barracuda ST3000DM001 drives and they only lasted me a few days before the "clicking of death" sound started and the system refused to boot from either one.
Now I've been using two Hitachi Deskstar 2TB drives for 6 weeks and haven't had any issues with them. I'd suggest them (or the Hitachi Deskstar 3TB) over the Seagate.
 
I have so many hard drives for backing up photos and video, I've lost count. I'm one of those people who thinks backing up digital data is crucial; as far has any hard drive goes, it's a matter of when not if.
My largest drives are 2G Samsungs, I have about five Seagate 1G drives, a couple WD Greens and a Caviar, which I use as a "work" drive with my SSD.
I would rather spread the data around than have it all on one big drive. Individual drives, JBOD, RAID 1 or 5.
 
Kind of along the lines of what ronbo was saying, I use more smaller drives rather than one big drive. My primary system has 2x 500GB Hitachi drives for my video and photos (I do NOT want to risk losing my digital photos... I have them backed up on 5 different drives across 3 computers,) with an external HDD backup as well.

I suppose I increase the likelyhood of component failure with more components, but I think it's a better solution for me, anyway. In case of HDD failure, I'm only trying to recover 1/2 or 1/3rd of my storage data, instead of 100% of it.

Also, given the reviews I've seen, and some feedback from you all here at AT, I wouldn't gamble on a +2GB HDD right now.
 
some very interesting points above...

are you guys saying that the smaller the hdd the more reliable it will be...?

Is a 2TB hdd a more matured technology and hence more reliable with much less failure rate than 3TB ?

i'm confused... 😕
 
I think there is some problems with the multi-platter big-gig drives. I would probably try to find the biggest single-platter drive, check the reviews for reliability issues and try that.

...it would still make me nervous to put all my data 'eggs' in one big HHD 'basket.'
 
Funny that that the 640 gb wd blue drive was mentioned. I have a couple of those that I've used pretty heavily for the past 4 yrs or so with no issues. It seems that the larger hdds of today aren't as reliable as the older ones were.
 
bryanW1995 said:
Funny that that the 640 gb wd blue drive was mentioned. I have a couple of those that I've used pretty heavily for the past 4 yrs or so with no issues. It seems that the larger hdds of today aren't as reliable as the older ones were.
Click to expand...

I'm still running my... lessee... 7-year old WD Blue 80GB HDD in my old desktop Dell. Never any noise, never any problems... 😎
 
I have two WD 2TB Greens, two Samsung 2TB HD204UIs, one Hitachi 2TB 5K3000, and one WD 1.5TB Green. All data exists live and on an unplugged drive that I back up via an eSATA dock. I haven't had problems with any of these brands and feel my data is reasonably secure (except in the event of fire/catastrophe, in which case I'll at least have insurance money to make me feel better).
 
rana_kirti said:
Hi fellas,

Just became a proud owner of a Crucial 128Gb M4. The difference it made to my system is night and day.

Everyone Please buy an SSD for OS/Apps/Games.!! :thumbsup:

So now i need to buy a 3tb HDD for storage. I simply want the most reliable HDD out there. I just can't deal with RMA. I'm willing to compromise on power consumption and noise but it has to be 100% reliable. So guys, which 3tb HDD would be most reliable option ?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...78&IsNodeId=1&bop=And&Order=PRICE&PageSize=20

Thanks,

Rana.
Click to expand...

Those are consumer drives. If you're serious about having a reliable drive you need to look at the enterprise stuff. Eg. http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/products/enterprise-hard-drives/constellation-es/

You'll pay more (best price I saw for 3TB was $350) but it's more reliable. If you're willing to buy a lesser drive and sacrifice reliability there are a ton of options there too. Most consumer drives are pretty sketchy anymore. Especially at the capacity you're asking for.

edit to add-
Considering the prices on those drives you linked, which aren't cheap- if it were I'd pickup this instead http://www.cometsupply.com/mp/SEAGATE/pm/SGTST33000650NS/r/gg/
It's $330 and this drive http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/pr...constellation-es-2/#tTabContentSpecifications
 
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FWIW the last spindles I retired from my home were WD740GD Raptors. They ran in that system for 8 years, not so much as a Windows re install was ever required since they were first purchased. Even 3 years of heavy WoW play and there were months I left it on 24/7. To the day I dismantled it that machine felt nearly as fast as my SSDs in actual use (you see the XP logo for a split second but the first pass of the orange bar didn't go past 1/4 the way before the desktop appeared).

Not a single bad sector or SMART reallocation on any of them. I shed a tear when I gave them away, they didn't owe me a damn thing.
 
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my seagate also died after about 2 years. i realize that this is a ridiculously small sample size and that other vendors can be just as bad, but ive just had some personal aversion against seagate because of it.
data from the last years shows that hitachi drives are about 50% more likely to fail that WD and seagate drives. (i hate to say that because i really hate to see monopolies develop in the hdd space.)

generally, smaller capacities are less likely to fail than larger ones, lower rpm is also better than higher rpm at the same capacity level....also there is an optimal operating temperature thats in a google paper somewhere....to protect it even further i suggest getting an automatic voltage regulator and a high grade PSU. and protect it from shock
 
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Helicobacter said:
my seagate also died after about 2 years. i realize that this is a ridiculously small sample size and that other vendors can be just as bad, but ive just had some personal aversion against seagate because of it.
data from the last years shows that hitachi drives are about 50% more likely to fail that WD and seagate drives. (i hate to say that because i really hate to see monopolies develop in the hdd space.)

generally, smaller capacities are less likely to fail than larger ones, lower rpm is also better than higher rpm at the same capacity level....also there is an optimal operating temperature thats in a google paper somewhere....to protect it even further i suggest getting an automatic voltage regulator and a high grade PSU. and protect it from shock
Click to expand...

I've had all brands fail on me, WD more than all others but it's irrelevant and anecdotal as you said. They're all consumer level crap. If you want a better bet at reliability you gotta pay out of the nose for it unfortunately. Companies do, because they can't afford not to.
 
Obsoleet said:
Those are consumer drives. If you're serious about having a reliable drive you need to look at the enterprise stuff.

You'll pay more (best price I saw for 3TB was $350) but it's more reliable.
Click to expand...

That is a hell of a deal for a 3TB enterprise drive. Thanks for the link.
 
Obsoleet said:
Those are consumer drives. If you're serious about having a reliable drive you need to look at the enterprise stuff. Eg. http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/products/enterprise-hard-drives/constellation-es/
Click to expand...

Enterprise drives fail too. We've had to replace a bunch of Enterprise class SATA drives on servers through the years that fail. It should come as no surprise, they have the same guts as the consumer stuff (a spinning platters and moving head) and moving parts are moving parts, they can and will fail.
 
Rofl??? Obviously.
If you have a drive that never fails it's not a HDD. Another obvious statement- you'd be nuts to replace those "unreliable" enterprise drives with consumer drives. 😉
 
Check BestBuy.com, they have 7200 RPM 3TB Seagate drives in their marketplace (sold by Ant Online), for $190. Only one year warranty though.
 
Obsoleet said:
Rofl??? Obviously.
If you have a drive that never fails it's not a HDD. Another obvious statement- you'd be nuts to replace those "unreliable" enterprise drives with consumer drives. 😉
Click to expand...

You misunderstood my point then, I have seen enterprise SATA drives fail often enough to question the belief they are vastly more reliable than consumer drives. Just because it cost more, don't assume it's more reliable. I would not be surprised at all to hear if they just slapped on different stickers on the drives, mark their price up, and sell them as enterprise drives so corporations will pay more for them.

I would not pay the premium for an enterprise SATA drive for my home systems, I'd just go with a consumer drive with the longest warranty you can find. Then buy another consumer drive with the money you saved and use it as a backup drive. 🙂 You don't want to solely rely on hope that your drive, consumer or enterprise, won't fail. Always backup.
 
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Getting an SSD is quite addicting, its ridiculous how slow standard HDDs are. I've recently added an SSD in both my laptop and desktop. I don't plan on owning another computer without an SSD.

As for a reliable 3TB...its hard to say. Theoretically a HDD with less platters would be more reliable, but from there its hard to predict its failure rate.
 
iluvdeal said:
You misunderstood my point then, I have seen enterprise SATA drives fail often enough to question the belief they are vastly more reliable than consumer drives. Just because it cost more, don't assume it's more reliable. I would not be surprised at all to hear if they just slapped on different stickers on the drives, mark their price up, and sell them as enterprise drives so corporations will pay more for them.

I would not pay the premium for an enterprise SATA drive for my home systems, I'd just go with a consumer drive with the longest warranty you can find. Then buy another consumer drive with the money you saved and use it as a backup drive. 🙂 You don't want to solely rely on hope that your drive, consumer or enterprise, won't fail. Always backup.
Click to expand...

As someone who worked at Samsung and for Hitachi, I would disagree that the difference is a sticker.
 
I've only had 2 hardrives fail on me my whole life. Both IBM ones a 500gig one and a 380gig one. Both purchased the same year. go figure.

I've never had a problem with seagate drives so far.
 
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